Channel 4 picks up Studio Lambert’s Ultimate Traveller

UK broadcaster Channel 4 has ordered a new show, Ultimate Traveller, from Stephen Lambert’s Studio Lambert and All3Media International will start shopping the format internationally at MIP TV.

The series follows two groups of inexperienced backpackers as they compete with one another while making an eight-week journey across an exotic location. In each episode, the groups, which change each week, are tasked with reaching a certain destination and with completing tasks en route. These include travelling without guide books or making friends with the locals.

Each week the groups also vote on a ‘traveller of the week’ who is the rewarded with an increased travel budget. At the end of the series the travellers vote on who should be crowned ‘the ultimate traveller’ and that person scoops a £10,000 prize (US$14k).

In the UK the series, which was previously known as The Ultimate Gap Year, will air on Channel 4’s T4 youth strand.

The Channel 4 pick-up is the second for Studio Lambert, the fledgling production company run by ex-RDF chief creative officer Stephen Lambert and backed by UK super indie All3Media.

The broadcaster also picked up the company’s Undercover Boss show, in which a company chief goes undercover at their own firm, and All3Media International subsequently optioned it to Endemol France, Nordisk in Finland and signed for the rest of Scandinavia as well as Belgium and Spain.